Individual Training in Our Colleges

CHAPTER VI
OUR EARLIER COLLEGES: THEIR POVERTY--THE NUMBER
AND SALARIES OF THEIR FACULTIES

UNTIL very recent times our colleges started in the direst poverty.
This was especially true of the earlier institutions, founded at a
time when the colonies suffered greatly from lack of money and
material wealth. It was not their riches, endowments and buildings that made the colleges, but the missionary spirit and self-
denial of the few, miserably paid members of the faculties, who
sacrificed all material comforts, all hope of worldly advancement,
and oftentimes their lives and the welfare of their families, that
they might thoroughly train their few pupils for a great life's
work in regenerating a lost world. We may measure their earnestness by the depth of their sacrifices; and the poverty of the institutions by the small sums relatively that they obtained from the
men after whom they were named. Harvard received from the
estate of John Harvard less than £400, and some books; Yale
from Governor Yale about £500; and Dartmouth, from Lord Dartmouth, fifty guineas. But all these amounts were in cash,
and demonstrate the value then put upon actual money. In 1803 the College of Rhode Island voted that a donation of
five thousand dollars, within one year, should entitle the donor to
name the college. The sum was given by Mr. Nicholas Brown
and the college was named after him.

Small donations to college namesakes.

Early collage poverty.

In her early poverty Harvard was but the prototype of most
of her successors.

"Their history is a story of small beginnings made in poverty; of hard struggles to secure funds for either endowment
or immediate expenditure; of a success usually moderate in
such endeavors; of expenses frequently exceeding income;
of economies at times foolish in method, at times wise, but
usually necessary; of constant anxieties borne by officers --

Print this page

While we understand printed pages are helpful to our users, this limitation is necessary
to help protect our publishers' copyrighted material and prevent its unlawful distribution.
We are sorry for any inconvenience.